Social participation for the construction of the Sustainable Development and Climate Action Plan of the City of Rio de Janeiro

The Sustainable Development and Climate Action Plan, coordinated by the Planning Office of the Undersecretariat for Planning and Monitoring Results, was created after listening to cariocas about their hopes, priorities and aspirations for the future of the city. More than 35 thousand people participated directly in the dialogues for the future of the city in the next 30 years. Through polls on the participa.rio platform, cariocas left their contributions. Face-to-face activities were fundamental for the literal dialogue with the population. The projects included not only improvements for the city's infrastructure, but for the people who live there. In these activities, it was possible to deepen understandings, review definitions pointing to specific needs, engage and involve participants, stimulate citizenship and effectiveness in policies and planning. This decentralisation of the process sought to share responsibilities, share difficulties and together find strategies and new paths for an increasingly better city.

Understanding the challenge of reaching different profiles in such a large and multifaceted city, different strategies were created: training workshops; an online platform with different participation surveys and specific content for children and young people; face-to-face meetings with innovative dynamics; projects with the municipal education network from the children's point of view. All this was only possible thanks to key partnerships, such as UN-Habitat, C40 network, UFRJ, Municipal Secretariat of Education and MultiRio.

Launched in 2018, the participa.rio platform was an important tool for access and transparency of actions. Cariocas dived into the waves of participation, involving more than 2,500 contributions in the 04 stages open to the public.  

The training workshops held with UN-Habitat in 2019 addressing Open Government themes involved more than 1300 municipal technicians and from partner institutions, representing an important driver of the participation process, since the technicians were trained and also contributed with proposals for the Plan. In a specific workshop for the municipal education network, more than a thousand employees participated at the same time, promoting a great synergy of objectives, strengthening the fundamental partnership with education. During this workshop, a competition was launched to name the character created to be "the children's friend", seeking to disseminate information on sustainable development. This contest has boosted many school activities. The involvement of students affected their families, generating more than 5,000 votes on the Platform, electing Susteco as the name of the character.

The SDP reached the schools intertwined with the activities of dissemination of the SDGs. From then on, parents, staff, local representatives and students were together in understanding and valuing the sustainable development of the city.

Also in 2019, face-to-face meetings were held involving institutions, leaders, civil society, children, youth, adults and the elderly, allowing this plan to be democratically built with popular engagement. And as a final moment, there was the direct involvement of children in the proposition of actions for the city, from the D-Day - Affective Mapping, held on November 8.

The digital platform plays an important role in this process, since it is there that all the results achieved are made available and it will be through it that the cariocas will be able to follow the implementation of the Plan.